


The Last Word

by Sintari (OriginalSintari)



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Angst, Canada!, Case Fic, Dean POV, Denial, Hurt/Comfort, Jealous Dean Winchester, M/M, Masturbation, Mutual Masturbation, Oral Sex, Past Underage, Pining, SPN Reverse Bang 2019, Season/Series 02, Sibling Incest, Snow Adventures!, Wincest - Freeform, but barely, fic with art, first time in a long time
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-26
Updated: 2019-11-26
Packaged: 2021-02-25 23:35:13
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,115
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21563881
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/OriginalSintari/pseuds/Sintari
Summary: When a case in the snowy north leaves them stranded and injured, all they need is the right word… And that’s the one thing Dean’s never been able to find when it comes to how he feels about Sam.
Relationships: Dean Winchester/Sam Winchester
Comments: 46
Kudos: 195





	The Last Word

**Author's Note:**

> This fic was written for the [SPN Reverse Bang 2019](https://spn-reversebang.livejournal.com/) and inspired by the wonderfully talented [Tiggeratl1](https://tiggeratl1.livejournal.com/)'s amazing art. I'd been wanting to write a snowy adventure and this felt like serendipity. Our joint RBB post is **[here](https://spn-reversebang.livejournal.com/378032.html)**!
> 
> Thanks, as always, to [Ratflavored](https://archiveofourown.org/users/RatFlavored/pseuds/RatFlavored) and [Fledhyris](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Fledhyris/pseuds/Fledhyris) for the betas and encouragement. I'm sorry this kept growing and growing.

[](https://www.flickr.com/photos/183801240@N04/49126861413/in/dateposted-public/)

_Among men and women,_  
_those in love do not always announce themselves with declarations and vows._  
_But they are the ones who weep when you’re gone._  
_Who miss you every single night,_  
_especially when the sky is so deep and beautiful,_  
_and the ground so very cold._  
_\- Alice Hoffman_

“And if you can’t stop him, Dean, you’ve gotta kill him.”

Sometimes his father’s last words break in like this, when he’s sitting still, when he doesn’t have enough to do with his hands.

Even while battling some sinus something, Sam took on that rawhead like a real trooper, so Dean’s doing his caring big brother routine and letting him control the remote. From on top of the covers on his own bed, though, his thumb twitches like a backseat driver every time Sammy lets the channel linger too long on some giant sloth documentary or, God forbid, C-Span.

“This stuff is important. They’re making laws, Dean.”

As if laws apply to them.

Though right now Dean’s ready to write his Congressman about these damn Arkansas Blue Laws that mean all he has in the cooler is watery American beer, and how that doesn’t do the trick when Sam finally flicks them away from a loud white guy in a red tie and American flag lapel pin haranguing some long-suffering newscaster, and the next channel is a M*A*S*H re-run.

_Oh._

_It’s you again._

Thankfully, Dean’s Other Other Phone chooses that time to ring. By the time he fumbles it out of the side pocket of his duffle, Sam’s onward to Marcia Brady scowling brace-faced at herself in the mirror.

Dean sneaks a look at Sam before accepting the call, but if M*A*S*H hits his brother the same way it hits him, it isn’t showing in the line of his shoulders or the clench of his jaw. Hell, for all Dean knows, M*A*S*H doesn’t mean a thing to Sam and he just has shitty taste in television for skipping over it.

“This isn’t John Winchester,” the measured voice on the phone says. Just that one sentence is all Dean needs to recognize that far away quality of an international call. M*A*S*H, the comedy with all its attendant drama, is forgotten.

“Who is this?” His tone must have gone all serious, because Sam’s suddenly muting the TV and looking his way.

“Who’s this?” the voice on the other end of the phone challenges back.

“Hey, you called me, man.”

“Julian Woodhouse. The…” a considered pause here. “…Hunter.”

“Hunter, huh?”

“But not the type of hunter you’re thinking,” he’s quick to clarify. Or at least that’s what Dean thinks he says. The call’s breaking up a little.

“Is this still the right number for uh… specialized hunting work?” Woodhouse asks.

Finally satisfied, Dean relents. “John’s not available right now.”

()()()()()

“So, guy knew dad. He’s like a civvy hunter,” Dean tells Sam after he hangs up. “Camouflage. Duck calls. Uh… dousing themselves in animal musk.”

Sam blinks rapidly. “What exactly do you think civilian hunters do, Dean?”

Dean doesn’t even bother to shrug. “Anyway, he got called in to a fracking site up in Canada. Something’s picking their workers off one by one. Owners thought it was a wolf, or- I don’t know – a fucking polar bear or something. But he got there and seems to think that it’s our kind of thing.”

“Canada,” Sam says this aloud, but Dean gets the feeling his little brother’s talking to himself.

“A little out of our service area,” Dean jokes. “But…”

“But if the guy knew to call Dad…”

“Yeah.”

The next morning, they’re heading north.

()()()()()

“Hey, it’s a Canadian squirrel,” Dean points out when they cross the border. He proceeds to point out a Canadian dog, a flat roadside Canadian possum, and, he’s proud of himself for this one, a Canadian bush. His broad wink is designed to test Sam’s tolerance, but all his brother does is look out the window until Dean spots a Canadian goose and Sam rouses himself enough to correct him.

“It’s technically called a Canada Goose.”

As they make their unaccustomed way north, what Dean thinks of as regular forest slowly transforms into boreal. Somewhere north of Prince George, Sam gets into the spirit and points out a whooping crane standing on the edge of a lake.

“Is that what that is? I thought that was you when you were twelve.”

He doesn’t have to look to feel Sam roll his eyes.

“We were lucky to see that. They’re endangered,” Sam tries again.

“So were you when you were twelve.”

Sam hums in exasperation, but Dean’s peripheral vision is good enough to catch the curve of his brother’s cheek. Sam is smiling, even just for a minute. With their dad’s last words hanging over his head, Gordon in a jail cell because he failed to blow Sam’s balls off, and Ava God-knows-where, he’s smiling. Even if just for a moment. And if Dean has to track down every endangered species in Canada to keep it going, then get him his duck call and bull elk musk.

Sam’s only in his t-shirt, got his top layer off and bundled into the world’s most uncomfortable pillow, and Dean feels the unbidden urge, as he sometimes does in moments like this, to reach over and trace his finger up the blue veins on the inside of Sam’s forearm. It’s been over a year, but sometimes it feels like he just got Sam back yesterday.

It would take so little, to ruin this.

Then he realizes Sam’s eyes are on his. He’s noticed Dean’s not looking at his brother the way you’re supposed to look at your brother.

Dad. Gordon. All their talk about how Sam’s the evil one? Not if they could read Dean’s mind when he looks at Sam.

Eyes on the road, Dean. A black Mustang with orange flame decals passes them going the other way, giving Dean his out.

“Canadian douchebag.”

Sam shakes his head, but he’s still smiling a little when he nestles back into his flannel pillow.

()()()()()

The job site is so far out in the Canadian wilderness that the old woman in the tuque at the last trailer-turned-gas station down the line warns them to fill some extra gas cans and check the snow chains.

The site itself is in a clear-cut the color of a newly doused forest fire in an otherwise silver-firred valley. Days-old snow takes its time melting in the shade of black spruce. They pull into a pea gravel parking lot where a handful of pickups are parked in front of a dull tan single-wide with “Green Geophysical” lettered on the side.

“So… I guess the company name is supposed to be ironic?” Dean says, to no answer from Sam.

Other neat rows of trailers, modern day bunkhouses, bookend the site. It’s 2pm, and Dean guesses the workers are off doing whatever “fracking” is supposed to be, though his eyes are irresistibly drawn to the toxic-orange safety vests worn by two guys dragging a coil of cable out of the spiky firs. Crows call to each other as they make their way up the newly-built yellow pine steps and Dean feels a creep of unease, like they’re announcing his and Sam’s arrival to something distant and unseen.

The only person in the office has a phone jammed between his chin and the brim of his white hardhat. While the guy looks like he’d be more comfortable dangling someone in cement shoes off a dock than slouching behind a desk, both his hard hat and his polo are monogrammed with the Green Geophysical logo. Dean has to resist the urge to whisper-ask Sam if he thinks the guy’s underwear is monogrammed, too.

“I told you, four more left before dawn. How am I supposed to meet those…?” His tone changes when he sees Sam and Dean, and he holds up one finger to them. “Hey, hey. Hal. Hold on. I think the hunters are here now.” Dean startles at that word. Oh yeah. Duck calls.

Dude’s wrapping up his call now. “Yeah, yeah, yeah. You want a miracle worker? Go to church.”

Dean observes the office while the guy finishes up. Typical filing cabinet, metal shelving with extra hard hats and safety vests, truck keys with numbered keychains dangling off a peg board. The only thing out of place is an oddly shaped piece of carved wood placed carelessly on one of the metal shelves, but before Dean can nudge Sam, the guy, who turns out to be Elvin Alesio, site manager, stands up to shake their hands.

“You the guys Woodhouse sent? God knows you’re the only fools driving into this camp right now.”

Alesio fills them in. Over the past month, three workers have disappeared on the job. Their trucks still in the parking lot, their clothes, pictures from home, and dirty magazines all still in their bunks.

Turns out, only a few of these bunkhouses are filled at the moment. The current job involves driving out along twisting old logging roads, finding coordinates and placing markers. The camp is at the early stages of their operation and the real fun will only begin when the wells arrive.

…Unless they can’t shake their reputation as a hazardous workplace. Hazardous because they’d found what looked like drag marks where two of the three workers vanished. Drag marks leading to pools of blood. Then no trace of bodies. And now the guys are insisting on the buddy system, which is eating into profits.

This is where Alesio starts talking about the “bottom line,” and margins and some government land lease, blah blah blah. Sam will be tucking that babble into that steel trap brain of his so Dean doesn’t have to.

“So, before the attacks-“ Sam begins.

“The company prefers to call them ‘disappearances,’ fellas.”

Sam and Dean trade a look.

“So, before the disappearances, guys worked alone?”

“Well, everyone rode out with a partner, but they’d work alone, meet back up from time to time to move to the next spot. Except maybe…”

“Except?” This is his brother at his best, Dean thinks. He can infuse a single word with curiosity, sympathy. Not impatience, like Dean invariably would have if he’d been the one asking the questions.

“Except uh… Helton and Shull. Rumor says they were uh… special friends. I mean, I ain’t got nothing against it. My sister’s boy is one. Lives down in Vancouver now and everything. Not a thing against it except when it stops ‘em getting their work done. They weren’t the fastest. A little light in their boots-”

“Yeah, we get it,” Sam breaks in. And was he a little… testy now? Saint Sammy, Patron of the Distressed?

Alesio promises to introduce them to all the workers whose partners have gone missing, including J. D. Helton, at end of shift. Meanwhile, Alesio has already marked the sites of the “disappearances” for them on a map.

After walking them outside, Alesio regards the Impala while scratching absently at his head under his hard hat.

“Is that uh… 4-wheel drive?”

And that’s how Dean finds himself suffering the indignity of driving out into the Canadian wilderness in not just a pickup truck, but a Ford, and one with a Green Geophysical logo on the side no less. The orange safety vest Alesio had thrust at him lies crumpled in a ball on the seat between him and Sam.

“You look thrilled,” Sam teases from the passenger’s seat. “Oh wait, are you mad because he didn’t give you a hard hat?”

Dean grumbles but is secretly pleased. It seems the farther they get from civilization, the more Sam relaxes. It makes Dean want to reach across and tousle his hair like he hasn’t done since…

Since the last time he had.

Some nights, when he’s not on his guard, he can feel Sam’s hair threaded between his fingers still.

Dean flexes his hands on the unfamiliar steering wheel as if that could drive away the urge. If only it were that easy.

Sam has the map in his massive paws. “I think the site of the first _attack_ was right around here.”

“This does seem like a pleasant place for an _attack_ ,” Dean agrees. It’s worth it when Sam’s lips quirk.

The first set of coordinates turns up nothing. The second site, where “special friend” Kenny Shull went missing, is more interesting. Sam, his sightline higher than that of normal mortals, somehow spots a bloody handprint on a black spruce. Like _high_ on a black spruce. As if someone were being carried deeper into the boreal forest on a giant’s shoulder and grabbed for the tree in self-defense.

“They grow their monsters bigger in Canada?” Dean tries.

Sam spins in a slow circle, gazing up into the canopy. “I don’t know of anything that big that has a territory all the way up here. Maybe it can fly?”

On the way to the third site they have to hug the shoulder to allow another Green Geophysical truck to pass going the other way. Sam lifts two fingers in a wave and the truck’s passenger – young guy about Sam’s age – waves back. The third site, when they track its coordinates, is more nothing. By the time they wind their way through the logging trails back to the basecamp, more trucks are parked by the bunkhouses and Alesio is waiting to take their keys.

Dean can’t help but notice that Alesio walks around the truck, inspecting. As if Dean Winchester would damage a truck on a routine milk run. Even a Ford.

Dean is pleasantly surprised when the next place Alesio leads them to is a Quonset hut they hadn’t passed on the way up. Pleasantly surprised because this particular Quonset hut is decked out in neon signs and even Molson will do the job when it comes to this head scratcher. He should have known that with this many unaccompanied men around, alcohol would be close at hand.

Of course, that also means the place is a total sausage fest. When they duck into the smoky bar, the only women in sight are the two First Nations women behind the bar. One older, with a line on her face presumably for every drunk she’s ever tossed out on his ass, and the other her younger doppelganger, ably slinging pints despite what has to be an 8-month belly.

It’s a habit now, since he got Sam back. Walking into a bar and scanning for company. It started out as a way to gentle his little brother, like he was a skittish wild horse, into staying. Every girl in the backseat of the Impala, in the bathroom with irate bar patrons banging on the door, up against a dumpster in the alley, they were all messages for Sam. “See? It isn’t you. It isn’t you.”

If he’s entirely honest, he has to admit it’s not all altruistic. Dean Winchester gives himself everything that’ll scratch an itch – double cheeseburgers, blonde cocktail waitresses, a clean kill – so he doesn’t reach out and take the only thing he wants.

And the only thing that he wants is currently introducing himself to a guy sitting alone at the corner of the bar behind the beer taps, reading a book. Of course, nerd would attract nerd. With the way he has of always listening out with one ear for what Sam is doing, Dean catches that this is J. D. Helton. Recalls, because it’s his job to recall it, that this is the same guy who waved at them from the passing truck earlier in the day. But now he’s all hostile angles and closed lips until Sam intimates in a low voice, “I lost someone, too.”

He’s in awe, Dean is, of the things his little brother can do.

Helton shakes a smoke out of his pack with a meaningful look at Sam. When Dean starts to follow, Sam grazes two fingers where his jacket has ridden up, touches his fingerprints to Dean’s bare wrist. His little brother jerks his chin toward Alesio and the other victims’ partners.

Then Sam walks outside with Helton alone, and all Dean’s left with is a cold place on his skin where Sam’s fingers just were.

This case is quickly turning irritating. Arnold Farrell disappeared literally without a trace. A muckraker and complainer, his partner at first thought he’d just left the worksite for – heh – greener pastures until they realized his brand-new Toyota Tacoma still sat parked in the bunkhouse lot.

“Arnie fetishized that vehicle,” his partner mutters.

“Yeah, what kind of sicko fetishizes a car?” Dean replies.

The last disappearance was the bloodiest. The spot where Brad Muhlenberg laid his last marker featured all the signs of a large animal mauling except for any signs of the animal.

Dean’s knees are squeezed under one of the bar’s mismatched Formica tables now and he’s feeling a little claustrophobic with guys in muddy work boots crowded all around him.

“Did you guys find any scat while you were out there?” Alesio asks, sipping his Molson.

Dean manages to only go slightly wide-eyed before remembering that Woodhouse introduced them as his “hunting” associates. He’s going to have to give that guy a special big thank you for that if they ever meet in person.

“Nah. Uh- nothing like that. It’s a real mystery for sure.”

A skinny guy with a cigarette behind his ear nudges in to ask, “Well if you didn’t find any animal sign what are you going to do next?”

A Winchester always recognizes when the mood of a room’s about to turn punch-y, usually because he’s the responsible party. Dean flicks his eyes around for Sam. It’s been twenty minutes at least and his brother is still outside with that other guy and… Oh. But he’s got bigger problems.

Slamming his beer on the table, Dean boasts “Relax, fellas. We don’t track it? We get it to come to us.”

Dean’s bluffing, of course, but his bravado is exactly what the workers wanted to hear, as their now politely Canadian round of “aights,” and “attaboys” attest.

He decides to leave before someone asks him about his monster-bait preferences. It’s full dark when he dips outside, and his first step crunches on re-frozen dirt. Dean blows hot breath into his cupped hands and looks around. Sam’s nowhere he can see, but then in the neon-sign glow he spots Sasquatch-sized footprints leading around the Quonset hut.

Dean follows. But before he can see Sam, he hears a sound he could pick out in the middle of a mosh pit. A sound he could recognize while drowning. His little brother is laughing.

It’s like the quick slash of a thumbnail across Dean’s heart, this sound he hasn’t heard since before their dad died.

He’s not thinking. Instead of finding Sam he turns on his heel and heads back to the Impala, a sleek panther parked among workhorses. Cranks her up. Since it sounds like Sam can get his own ride. Before he knows it, he’s back at the empty bunkhouse Alesio had shown them. Dean had cracked a bottom bunk joke at the time.

Yeah, Sam hadn’t laughed at that.

_House II: The Second Story_ is on. This is the funny one, not the one that scared Sam so much when they were little, and Dean’s seen it so many times that his mind wanders to the case. Enough blood that at least one of the guys is dead. Thermometer low enough overnight that survivors are probably not wandering alive out there unless they’ve found shelter. Oh, and that weird piece of wood in Alesio’s office. Dean’s bottle is half empty and it was just brand new. Some other dude’s making Sam laugh.

Dean should probably go and find Sam, but it’s easier to slouch farther into the pillows and pick up the remote.

A M*A*S*H rerun.

_Oh. It’s you again._

_They’re holed up in the dead of winter in some Unabomber cabin. Snow’s all the way up in the wheel wells of the Impala, and Dad’s off somewhere with Caleb. There’s wood stacked under a tarp for the fireplace and a stack of flannel blankets in a cedar chest at the foot of one of the beds. If Dean were a person who used words like that, he would say it was “cozy.”_

_Used to be, trapped together in two rooms with a spotty heater, he and Sam would be throwing elbows by hour twelve. But Dean thinks on it – he has a lot of time to think on it – and realizes it’s been awhile since they were stuck somewhere like this, all in each other’s pockets. For all the freedom the Impala gave him, he sees now that it took something from him, too._

_Despite the cold, Sam’s walking around with no shirt and barefoot. At seventeen, he’d grown into graceful one day when Dean wasn’t paying close enough attention. He doesn’t know when this sickness took hold of him, but sometimes looking at his brother nearly makes Dean’s knees buckle._

_There’s a M*A*S*H marathon on TV and they’re drinking out of old McDonald’s collector’s glasses that came with the cabin. Dean’s got the Hamburglar, leaving Sam with Grimace. His brother mock-complains about it until Dean pours Wild Turkey all the way up to Grimace’s chin. It’s not like they have anything better to do, Dean remembers telling himself. It’s not like Sam wouldn’t have to get used to the taste at some point._

_Sam slumps down on the plaid couch beside him and their knees touch. By the time his drink is down to Grimace’s waist Sam’s thumbing at some of the stuffing sticking out of the couch cushion and grinning like a loon, and Dean’s been too long without this._

_Father Mulcahy performs last rites for a soldier in mummy bandages and Dean allows Sam to pour for them if he can prove his hands won’t shake._

_The 4077th rings in 1954 and Dean realizes that they’ve drifted to the middle of the couch and their thighs have been sealed together in a tight line for some time now._

_Sam uses Dean’s quadricep to brace himself when he sets Grimace down on the table and his hand stays there while the surgeons attempt to defuse unexploded ordnance in the middle of their tent camp._

_Dean sits as still as if he’s just spotted a fawn stepping tentatively out of the forest. If he moves Sam will realize what he’s doing and skitter away. But on the screen Trapper listens to the bomb with a stethoscope and Sam’s hand stays there, hot as a brand, heavy as a tombstone._

_Dean’s own hand’s moving on its own when he thumbs over the little knobby bone on the outside edge of Sam’s wrist. They’re both looking straight ahead at the TV now but Dean will go to his pyre never knowing if that bomb exploded or not because Sam’s four fingertips graze the hem at the inside of Dean’s thigh, and Dean goes hard so fast it must’ve broken the sound barrier and there’s no way he can hide how sick he is from Sam now._

_Dean does the one thing that should have been trained out of them long ago. He freezes. He freezes and he runs the tip of his tongue behind his teeth while he allows his little brother to trail his fingers up his thigh, a line of fire. Then Sam, who’s still facing straight ahead toward the TV, takes Dean’s zipper between his thumb and forefinger and lays him waste._

_Dean keeps his eyes trained on the television he isn’t seeing, as Sam eases him out of his boxers. He’ll always beat himself up over the fact that he was afraid to look. Was Sam looking at him? Was he even awake? Was he so drunk that he thought Dean was someone else? Had Dean tricked Sam into this somehow?_

_Dean inhales as the cold hits his cock._

_Then he does the opposite of everything he was ever supposed to do._

_He should have shouted, or run away, or said “What the fuck, Sam?” but truth be told he was never going to do any of that. Because there would always be that canyon between who Dean Winchester was, and what he should do, and what he wanted, and what he could do._

_Sam begins to stroke him just the way Dean likes it. Like he knows instinctively. Fuck. Like he was made for this._

_“Oh God Sammy, look what you’re doing,” he tries to say. Except his treacherous tongue won’t move, the only things escaping him are little hitching breaths and his most shameful secret._

_For someone so big, for someone so drunk, Sam moves quick and elegant when he bends down to take Dean’s cock in his mouth. Dean threads his fingers through Sam’s hair…_

And now he can’t watch M*A*S*H anymore without going dangerously hard.

He’d been shameless, ruining Sam.

They never said a word that night. Then they never talked about it afterward. Once, when he’d just gotten Sam back, when his brother was fresh out of the shower, towel slung low and having missed a lickable wet strip of droplets right down to his hipbone, Dean opened his mouth. But the words caught like splinters in his throat. To this day, they’ve never spoken about it.

Back in his lonely bunk, Dean’s hand has crept to his cock without him realizing it. Once Sam touched him here, and here, here; but Sam’s not here.

And, just like every other time he’s allowed himself to think about that night, soon enough, all he’s left with is a mess on his hands.

The story of his life.

He’s barely cleaned up when the door bursts open. And here’s Sam. Smiling. Smiling because of someone who isn’t Dean.

“Dean!” Sam’s voice sounds slurred, underwater. He’s standing with the door flung open, bringing cold gusts of wind in with him. Dean just looks at him, mouth agape. He’s a lot drunker than he realized.

“Come on,” Sam is saying. But Dean must have hesitated too long because Sam’s hovering over him now, enormous and bright-eyed. An arctic blast still blows in around him, like Sam is the only barrier between Dean and the cold.

“Come on,” he says again, and grabs Dean’s bicep. Dean jerks away and then looks up just in time to watch the very moment when he causes the smile to slide off Sam’s face.

“I wanted to show you…” Sam is saying.

Then someone else is outside. Dean hears what sounds like “Hey man, where’d you go?”

Sam’s back in the doorway now. He looks torn, eyes sweeping between Dean and whoever’s outside. Dean sees the moment Sam notices what’s on the TV.

“I thought you-” the voice is louder now. Just outside the door. But it cuts off, presumably after a single look from Sam. Oh. It’s Helton.

Dean’s hand is on the Taurus and the Taurus is pointed beyond Sam before his mind can catch up. At least that part of his training he hasn’t forgotten. Don’t let a threat get the jump on you.

“Dean,” Sam says. Disappointment in his voice. And it’s like Dad come back to life, standing there.

His brother gently closes the door, with himself on the outside. Sam’s made his choice then.

Dean sleeps. Miserable.

[](https://www.flickr.com/photos/183801240@N04/49127539632/in/dateposted-public/)

They’ve woken up like this too many times for today to be any different. Sam has uncharitably opened the blinds so Dean’s awakened by the sunlight on his face. A professional, he’s rarely hungover anymore, but today proves to be an exception. It’s a clue to Sam’s general mood that, while he has sat the aspirin next to Dean’s bunk, he didn’t provide a cup of water or take the pills out of the bottle, leaving Dean to wrestle with the childproofing while still lying flat on his back, afraid of what the transfer from horizontal to vertical might do to his throbbing head.

Dean knows, in the way that he always generally knows Sam’s whereabouts, that his brother isn’t in the room.

If it weren’t for the aspirin and the way the other bed is now made up with tight hospital corners, Dean might have suspected Sam didn’t sleep here at all last night.

This is not the way John Winchester would have handled this case. That thought is what finally has Dean sitting up in bed, all of his suspicions about his aching head confirmed. By the time he’s showered and dressed, Sam is back, and Dean is greeted upon emerging from the bathroom by a: “Want to tell me what that was about last night?”

No. No he really doesn’t.

“Your friend going out to work today?” he asks Sam instead. “Friend” has never sounded like such an ugly word.

“My-? JD? Yeah. He has four little brothers and sisters back home in Calgary that depend on his salary. So, it would be nice of us to figure out what’s killing workers instead of trying to play John Fucking Bonham.”

“Trying to play John Fucking Bonham,” Dean mimics, tossing his hair in imitation of Sam and, ouch, immediately wishing he hadn’t.

“Are you going to tell me what’s up with you?” Sam asks.

It’s not the Winchester way to have a chick flick moment when you could go on the attack so instead he says, “What I want to know is how you didn’t notice that weird piece of wood in Alesio’s office and help me go get it last night?”

“What? Couldn’t see to pick the lock with your beer goggles on?” his brother snaps back.

“Whatever, man. You distract him, get him out of the office, and I’ll snag the thing. Any luck it’s a cursed object or something and we’re back in the Land of the Free by tomorrow.”

“Distract him while you steal… this?” Sam’s pointing to one of the metal chests provided for the workers to store their gear and oh shit. It’s like coming across a snake on the path in front of you – the weird piece of wood now rests there, looking… weirder. If that’s possible.

“How’d you steal it?”

“I didn’t steal it.” Sam is talking to Dean like he’s a first grader now. Slow and with a visible twitch in his jaw. “They found it in the construction debris and thought the markings were interesting. So, I asked Alesio for it and he gave it to me.” Yeah, Dean can hear the quotation marks around the words asked and gave. “We don’t always have to sneak around, Dean.”

“Just around random Quonset huts then.”

“What?”

“Nothing.”

Dean is well aware he’s walking on the tightrope of Sam’s last nerve, and he’s not even sure how they got here, in this bout with endless rounds, no ring girls and a ref who checked out a long damn time ago.

He scrubs his hands over his stubble, regretting now that he didn’t bother to shave. Next to Sam, bright-eyed and well-rested, he must look like a mountain man.

“Alright, genius. Now what?”

As it turns out, there’s a lot of what.

“So get this. These symbols are pictographs. I found exactly one source on them in the lore, but that was enough for me to be able to translate these markings.”

Yes, while Dean slept off his hangover, his super nerd of a little brother has been translating pictographs.

“There’s some kind of guardian. It rises from the earth to protect the land from invaders.”

“Like people digging around underground for natural gas?” Dean guesses.

“Exactly. But see this?”

He points to symbols that look, to Dean, indistinguishable from all of the others. But he knows better than to question when Sammy gets like this, just nods in pretend understanding.

“This says sometimes it gets it wrong. But we’re in luck. It can be controlled with a single word.”

“Great. Sounds easy enough. So, what’s the word?”

Sam’s big shoulders slump.

“…I have no idea. The word has to be spoken, and according to this it can never be depicted or written down. So basically, we’re looking for an unknown, unwritten word from a tribe whose last member apparently died in 1989.”

“So, all we need is a word?”

“All we need is a word.”

Sam shrugs now. His tone changes when he says, “Guess that means we sneak back over to the Quonset hut now.”

Ouch.

()()()()()

It turns out the Quonset hut isn’t only a bar, it’s also home to Patty and Missy Adams, the two hardworking bartenders from the night before. Patty, the elder, looks about as happy to see them in the cold light of day as an infestation of roaches. Over her shoulder, Dean sees Missy, who they discover is Patty’s daughter, stretched out on the floor on a purple yoga mat, listening to something on a boombox next to her head. He can make out phrases like “breathwork” and what sounds like “cat cow” as she wrenches her body around painfully.

“We were wondering if you could tell us anything about this?” Sam’s brandishing the stick and wearing his most earnest face, the one that used to win him free bus fares and “extra” desserts from motherly waitresses when they were kids.

“You think I know what the fuck that is because I’m Indian?” Patty snarls.

“Uh- We just thought-“ Behind Sam’s shoulder, Dean has to smother a chuckle.

“We’re Spokane. From Washington?” She manages to look at Sam like he just failed to add two and two. “We’re just up here following the boomtowns.” Then she mutters something that sounds like “What? All we Indians look alike to you?”

Sam’s backing away, his hands up in a placating gesture that would be funny if it didn’t mean they’d just blown their only lead.

But then she says, “Well there is Old Ike.”

Dean’s had about enough. “Old Ike?”

“He’s our landlord. Said this land used to be a reserve where his people lived, but it’s private now since he’s the last one.”

Sam and Dean share a look.

“Reckon he’d know. But you’d have to find him. Lives out on Mount Shark. Only get there by bush plane this time of year, though.”

With that she shrugs and closes the door.

Dean catches his brother looking at him hopefully.

“Have fun on your airplane ride.”

()()()()()

When they get back to the camp ten minutes later, they’re greeted by an unusual flurry of activity. It’s the middle of the workday, but all the trucks are in the lot, and workers in their fluorescent orange vests are milling around the office trailer.

“What’s going on?” Dean asks two workers who are leaning on opposite sides of the bed of their truck, in quiet conference.

“JD Helton didn’t report back in,” one of them says, then spits on the ground. “Then they found…”

His co-worker finishes for him. “All they found was one of his boots.”

Dean meets Sam’s eyes. They’re wide with shock and something else, too. Something tender Dean doesn’t want to contemplate.

“Point us to the airfield?” Dean asks one of the workers. Sam nods at him, transferring something approving to him in the gesture, and it’s all the reward Dean needs.

()()()()()

Two hours later, they’re seated side by side in the back of a bush plane. Dean’s nails are ground so hard into his thighs that if they weren’t bitten down, he’d probably draw blood. Whether because Dean can never say no to his little brother, or because it’s his job to help people and Old Ike (what kind of name is that anyway?) is literally their only lead, Dean doesn’t contemplate.

If he admitted it to himself, and he won’t because he’s not introspective, he’d admit that he felt one second of triumph when he found out Helton might be out of the picture now.

They both have headsets on so they can communicate, but the only person in the small space who makes use of them is their pilot, who with his long gray mane and chaw of tobacco in his cheek is the Platonic ideal of a bush plane pilot in any movie. Once in a while he’ll point out a landmark, but Sam doesn’t answer, so neither does Dean.

“What’s he to you?” he wants to ask. But Sam’s turned away from Dean, looking out his window at the snow covered ground below him. His back, broad as a barn door, is tense. He looks as if he’d thrum like a plucked cello string if Dean touched him. And all Dean wants to do is touch him.

It’s easier to fight his brother, Dean realizes, than admit how much he wants him.

If they didn’t have an audience, he’d mend his ways. Open his mouth and say something. Reassure Sam they’d find whatever did this. Hell, even optimistically speculate that Sam’s friend Helton might still be alive out there somewhere.

But it never seems to be the right time to say the words he should say.

And then the pilot’s voice is in their ears, a low rumble, “Hang on, boys. There’s-“

The last thing Dean remembers is the plane lurching, half a barrel roll, then staring up into the cold blue sky. Then only falling.

[](https://www.flickr.com/photos/183801240@N04/49127352821/in/dateposted-public/)

When Dean awakes, he’s still staring at the sky. Only this time gray clouds are bunching over the mountains to his left, and he’s no longer ensconced in the “safety” of the bush plane. He’s in a clearing, flat on his back.

“Sam!” he says as he sits up, his go to word, but there’s no sign of his brother, or the plane.

One of his gloves is missing and he quickly stuffs his hand into his pocket, because the fact that this particular field is covered in three inches of snow clearly indicates the temperature is below freezing. Dean’s well trained, he is. And the sun slanting down toward the horizon – approximately an hour lower than it had been the last time he remembers looking at it – means it’s about to get a whole lot colder. Damn.

“And this, Sammy, is why we don’t fly,” he says aloud to an imaginary Sam. …He may have hit his head, actually.

Above him, more crows call to each other, tree to tree. He remembers Dad teaching them that crows will alert each other to breaking news, such as a predator, or a carcass. He swivels to follows each raucous caw, and wonders which one the crows think he is.

One of the earliest things Dad taught them was – and Dean can hear it in Dad’s voice still – “If you get lost. Stay put.”

But Dad’s dead. They’re unsupervised, he and Sam. There’s no one smarter or more experienced than they are to find them when they make some stupid move, like trusting a metal contraption to propel them through the sky. They’re on their own.

The stinging in Dean’s eyes is from the way the wind’s rising, is all.

He shouts for Sam again. No answer. Dean turns three hundred sixty degrees, looking for something. Shouldn’t there be smoke from the plane crash? How far away can it be?

If he were ejected from a moving vehicle, he should be dead. He’d heard the doctor at the hospital say it after their car crash, in quiet conference with an intern, neither of them having any idea that their patient’s impatient spirit was lurking behind them, cursing.

But there’s nothing - no sound, and no smoke. Just the eerie silence you can only find when no one you know is anywhere around here.

Remembering his training, Dean heads for high ground. His glove may be missing but he somehow still has his Taurus, and it’s in his hand now as he stops every few feet to look around. It’s the kind of pristine snow the two of them rarely see. No tire tracks, no sludge, not even any animal prints. He turns again to look for a sign and his footsteps are the only thing marring all that white perfect.

The northern autumn’s long dark begins to fall. Any smoke from the crashed plane would blend into the shadows now.

Dean reaches the top of a rise, but his view is just more trees as far as the eye can see. Not sure what else to do, he raises his arm into the air and fires. All that happens is a flock of birds too stupid to fly south for the winter scatter. If Sam can’t hear that and follow the sound, then he’s…

It isn’t worth thinking about.

“Always be prepared,” Dad had said, usually in the middle of something like teaching Dean how to make his own silver rounds like the most fucked up Boy Scout. Sam had, of course, brought with them on the rickety little plane their go-bag with its fire starters and the cool folding saw that had come in handy more than once outside of wilderness survival situations. And where’s that bag now?

Keeping to the ridges, Dean clears the next rise only to behold the same view. The only difference is that the sky is darker still. Dean’s teeth begin to chatter, which he knows isn’t necessarily a sign of hypothermia. But it’s also not not a sign of hypothermia.

It occurs to him for the first time that this might be how he dies.

He’s been here before, of course. But before it’s always been with a gun barrel digging into his temple or a pair of ragged claws slicing at his neck. He’s always suspected he wouldn’t live past thirty. But he never suspected that when he died, he’d do it alone.

Somehow, he’d thought Sam would be there. Maybe so Dean could protect his little brother one last time. And how messed up was that?

The next morning, after the M*A*S*H episode, Sam had got up early to go for a run on the freshly shoveled path. They’d silently and hungoverly split a can of cold corned beef hash after, then Dad had returned and it was time to move on. Dad – maybe he sensed something – had ordered Sam to ride with him and by the time they’d pulled over for a couple hours’ sleep right after passing the “Welcome to Indiana, Lincoln’s Boyhood Home” sign, it was like it had never happened.

Sam may have tried to talk about it once, before he left them. “Hey, remember that cabin in Michigan?” But Dean had shut that line of questioning down with an elbow to Sam’s solar plexus and then slamming two doors (the motel’s and the Impala’s) between them, and Sam’d never brought it up again.

Some things are just too big to put into words.

And now they’ll never have the chance.

Except… is that?

He hears something on the rising wind and begins to follow the sound down the ridge and toward the mountains. As he gets closer, he hears it again. That sound he could pick out in the middle of a mosh pit. That sound he could recognize while drowning.

Sam. Calling his name.

Before he sees Sam he sees the black smoke, and the shine of the last rays of the dying sun reflecting off the body of the now-mangled plane.

Sam’s propped against a tree, sitting on a red flotation device, their go-bag at his side, looking for all the world like he’s on a picnic, except for the tourniquet tied off just above a jagged piece of metal sticking out of his calf. He’s pale, has dirt in his hair, and his mouth, before he notices Dean, is a thin line spelling out pain.

To Dean, he’s never looked more beautiful. He wants to scoop his brother up, like he’s five again and just scraped his knee in a motel parking lot.

“Sam,” is all he can say.

Sam musters the ghost of a smile. “Dean.”

Dean’s kneeling in front of him now, checking his brother’s work in a way that would have Sam biting his head off if he were any healthier, hands on the tourniquet coming away wet with blood.

“What did you do to your leg, huh?”

Sam gestures at his adequate repair job, his voice weak as he strings his next words together. “Hey, one of us is supposed to stay put, right?”

It does something tender to Dean, to hear Sam parroting their dad’s words. He uses the excuse of washing Sam’s blood - his brother’s blood - off his hands with snow so he doesn’t open his mouth and say something he shouldn’t. Something that would blow their whole lives up.

“The pilot?” Dean asks, without looking too hard at the plane’s wreckage.

“No,” is all Sam says.

Damn.

“We can’t…” Dean says.

“Yeah,” Sam agrees. Dean knows he’s in a lot of pain if he’s back to speaking in monosyllables.

He’s still kneeling in front of his brother. Something makes him use his non-gloved hand to swipe a tendril of hair behind Sam’s ear. If he were an optimistic man, he might think that Sam leaned into his touch.

Then he makes himself a promise. When they die, it won’t be like this.

“Hang on, okay?” Dean says. This time Sam just nods minutely.

The moon is rising over the mountains now, casting Sam’s pale face in silvered glow. At a loss, Dean wanders away a few feet, finds another ridge to climb. And this time something catches his eye. Or more like the absence of something. The mountains are still to his left, but there’s a darker opening in the gray. A cave… maybe?

“Don’t go anywhere, gimpy,” he calls to Sam. He wonders if his voice sounds as falsely cheerful to Sam as it does to his own ears.

Snow crunches under his feet and the temperature drops precipitously as he progresses into the shadow of the mountain, but as his eyes adjust he can’t believe his luck. It is a cave. Or at least a crack in the rock, and if they can get out of this wind, maybe, just maybe, they’ll survive the night.

Except once he enters the cave and rounds an outcropping, he’s not so sure about that.

Turns out it’s not just a cave. It’s a lair. The lair of something that drags its victims home to crunch on their bones at its leisure. And, judging from the piece of scalp – gross – hanging from the tip of a stalagmite, its victims are of the human variety.

But whatever it is isn’t home right now, and so it’ll have to do.

It feels like hours, making their way, three-legged, to the cave.

When they’re just outside, Sam squeezes his shoulder to make him stop walking. Dean glances over at him, breath caught. Is he bleeding out?

But Sam’s looking up. Wonder on his face and light in his eyes. Dean follows his gaze.

Oh.

Oh wow.

So that’s what that looks like in real life.

Above their heads, bands of green, blue, purple and pink spill across the night sky.

They both stop for a moment, pressed against each other. In awe.

“This is why,” Sam says.

It says a lot about the sheer wonder of the aurora that Dean doesn’t look at Sam when he asks, near breathless, “This is why what?”

“Why I came to find you last night,” his brother says. And then all his weight sags against Dean. He’s out.

()()()()()

He drags Sam’s dead weight as far from the cave entrance as possible, winding back to where the cavern widens. Though, upsettingly, this is also where the creature apparently lives and… feeds.

Dean wavers a few indecisive seconds between whether he would better serve Sam by re-checking his wound or attempting to build a fire to warm him up first. The wound wins, and Dean’s able to re-bind the tourniquet and stop the bleeding. Sam’s face is still gray with pain, but his pulse is strong and so Dean lets him sleep. It’s up to him to keep them alive now.

And the first step in that plan is to figure out how to keep them warm. Dean finally takes the time to cast his gaze around the larger chamber. A neat stack of firewood would be too easy.

Dean remembers another one of Dad’s fucked up Boy Scout lessons. The bones will have to do.

This cave is a horror show, but Dean can’t think about that right now. Instead, their folding survival saw finally gets its chance to work its magic in a wilderness situation. Thankfully, Dad’s training holds up and soon enough he has a small fire going, with clothing as tinder and bones as fuel. Dean tries not to think too hard about what he’s just done. Otherwise it’s going to be a long, horrifying night.

As he waits to see if the bones will catch and burn Dean drops a kiss on the top of Sam’s head. Because he can. Because, he finally admits to himself, it might be his last chance.

And here’s Dean Winchester, the dumbass who looked at his brother across the middle seat, across the motel room, across the years, and thought they had time.

The fire casts light and shadows, illuminating more of the cavernous space, and in this new light Dean spots an orange safety vest.

An orange safety vest that moves. Holy shit.

His face is scraped red and raw and his clothes hang off him in rags. Dean recognizes the physical signs of dragging, and only God knows how far. But his is a face Dean would never forget. JD Helton.

“Hey. Hey buddy.” Dean’s afraid to even tap his shoulder, his body too bloody and raw.

Helton shudders then. Dean positions the flashlight so it’s not burning right in his mangled face, and his eyes finally lurch open. He gasps.

Dean looks to Sam. For what? For help? To show him that his friend is okay? Or, a darker voice in his soul asks, to make sure Sam doesn’t see who Dean’s found?

But Sam’s still asleep, and Dean masters himself. Focuses on the task at hand. “It’s okay. It’s okay. You’re safe now.” Dean feels his pulse. Thready.

Helton says something that Dean can’t make out. Coughs, then tries again.

Helton finally croaks out: “Found him.”

Dean swings the flashlight around the space. That’s when he realizes there aren’t one, but two bodies here. The other, the one who didn’t make it, has to be Kenny Shull. Damn.

“I’m… I’m sorry about your…” Dean tries. Sam, of course, would be better in this situation.

Helton doesn’t say anything, only stares levelly at the body of his… friend? Dean glances involuntarily back at Sam. What would he do if it were Sam like that? He’d die, too. It’s just that simple.

Mastering himself, Dean returns with the first aid kit, regards Helton’s wounds, not sure where to start.

“I need to…” Dean is saying, but Helton speaks again, his voice a little stronger now.

“I never found the words.”

“What?” Dean’s thrown all propriety to the wind now. He’s unbuttoned Helton’s safety vest and pulled his shirt up. The wound he finds there isn’t good. They need a doctor. Like a real doctor. Think, Dean.

“For Kenny. I never told him.”

Oh. Well, that’s… that’s none of Dean’s business.

“Man, I gotta get out of here. Go for some help.”

Just to laugh at his plans, lightning cracks the sky outside.

“Oh shit,” Helton coughs the words out. “It’s coming… That’s what it does… Thunder and lightning in a clear sky. It’s coming.”

The Taurus is in Dean’s hand now, he’s standing in front of Sam before he even realizes he stood up.

“What is it?” he says to Helton. Then, when Helton doesn’t say anything, “Tell me what I’m about to fight here.”

But Helton, it seems, has said his last words.

Dean’s on his own. He takes up a protective stance in front of his brother. Behind him, Sam stirs but remains out. He thinks back to the strange pictographs in the wood, to Sam’s research. All they need to stop this thing is a word – the thing Dean’s never been able to find when it comes to Sam.

Despite the noise heralding its arrival, the creature is surprisingly quiet. The first sign Dean sees is its shadow, growing larger and larger in the light from the bone fire. As it rounds a bend in the cavern, the shadow resolves into a pair of ibex-antlers on the head, but its heavy, trundling steps are anything but deer-like.

During their research, Sam had mentioned Pacific Northwestern legends. Animals that can shapeshift, an otter in the sea becoming a wolf on land. Dean listens for the clack of claws on stone. Sniffs the air to try and detect the musky scent of a predator. Anything for a clue. What the fuck is this thing?

…The creature that finally walks in looks a little bit like a four-legged version of one of those Wild Things from that kids’ book that Sam loved so much.

And now Dean feels kind of bad that he’s going to have to kill it.

He apparently has the element of surprise, because when the creature sees him, Dean quickly finds out the hard way that it had been hunched over to enter the cave. Now, standing on its hind legs, it’s nearly double his height and, well, that explains the bloody handprint so high up in the tree.

The smart thing to do would be to find a crack in the rock, somewhere small where the creature can’t reach. But no way in hell is he leaving Sam at this thing’s mercy.

The Wild Thing roars as it spots him, and Dean aims for one of its eyes.

But before he can pull the trigger, someone shouts something in a language he doesn’t recognize.

And the thing, which frankly Dean hadn’t been sure his hollow point rounds would drop in time, collapses to the floor, string-cut and perfectly still.

Mouth probably agape like a hooked fish, Dean turns his attention to whoever made this happen.

The person standing in front of him has to be ninety at least. He’s bone skinny and his layers and Carhartt jacket aren’t hiding it. A navy blue Vancouver Canucks hat is pulled down low on his forehead and keys dangle from a ring around one of his fingers. He’s just about what you’d expect from someone who chooses to live in the Canadian wilderness and yet this must be Old Ike, last of his kind.

“You said the word,” Dean stammers.

The old man nods to Dean. Then jerks his chin toward Sam. “Didn’t say it fast enough, maybe?”

()()()()()

The keys were to Old Ike’s ATV. He’d seen the plane crash when he was out re-upping his stove wood supply that evening and headed out to see what the fuss was about. Then the thunder and lightning in a clear sky, and the rest was easy enough to figure out.

At first Dean’s leery of leaving the Wild Thing in the cave, but getting Sam somewhere warm and safe takes priority. His brother rouses long enough for Dean to lead him to the back of the ATV where they huddle together on the surprisingly short ride to Old Ike’s cabin. Dean thinks he should say something to his brother, tell him about Helton, or tell him… the other thing, but there’s no good way to say it and Sam’s eyes keep slipping closed.

“Do you have anything to help him?” Dean asks Old Ike, when they’re back in his spartan two-room cabin.

“He’s got a piece of airplane in his leg. Think I’m magic just because I’m an Indian?”

“Why does everybody keep asking us that?” Dean mutters.

The rescue squad can’t get there until daybreak – which is just a few hours away now. Old Ike finds a musty-smelling air mattress, which Dean has to pump up on the kitchen floor. With Sam settled mostly under a quilt at his feet, Dean and Old Ike sit at a two-person table. At the table, Dean is perfectly positioned to hover and quite content with that, thank you very much.

“What is that thing?” Dean finally asks, warming his hands around a tin mug of muddy instant coffee.

Old Ike tells him its true name then. But the old man appears truly shocked when Dean fills him in on the creature’s recent behavior.

“I didn’t know… I would never think…”

“Can you keep it from attacking any other workers?”

“Yes,” he says simply. “But why should I? That was our land until there were no longer enough of us to qualify for the reserve. He’s guarded our land since the Raven created the world.”

When Dean gives him a blank look Old Ike explains. “That means they started it.”

Dean glances down at Sam, who’d be much better at this, but he’s still sleeping fitfully.

“I feel you, man,” Dean says lamely. “But those guys are just doing their jobs, too. Do they deserve to die?”

At this Old Ike truly does look troubled. He sips his coffee before answering.

“It will die soon,” he finally says. “When I die, it will die, too.”

Dean swallows. “I think I know what that feels like.”

His eyes travel involuntarily to Sam as he says it.

Sam, whose eyes are wide open now, resting on Dean’s. It’s just Sam’s smile. The real one. Something Dean’s seen a million times, hell he’s caused it almost that many times, but it feels like something else. Gazing down at Sam, who’s gingerly picking himself up into a sitting position now, eyes never leaving Dean’s, it’s suddenly everything.

“What does it mean?” Sam croaks. Dean’s quick to hand him some water. “The word.” Sam says more clearly now. “What does it mean?”

Old Ike looks even more ancient then as he contemplates.

“It’s the most important word in our language, he finally says. “But hard to translate into yours. I guess you would say it means…” He thinks for a few seconds. “It means home.”

Dean’s eyes are still on Sam’s, trapped there like a magnet, when Sam says, “I think I know what that feels like.”

Something passes between them then. It’s still there a few hours later when Dean lays his hand next to Sam’s in the rescue helicopter, and they ride that way, with the tips of Sam’s fingers resting against the side of Dean’s palm all the way to the hospital in Prince George.

The next morning, Sam’s bandaged up now, color closer to normal. The wound will leave a scar, but then what else is new for them?

Dean sits in a comically uncomfortable chair at the head of his brother’s hospital bed, waiting impatiently for Sam to wake up.

Some people know the right things to say automatically. Dean’s never been like that. Every time he opens his mouth, he’s just as likely to earn a punch to the jaw as bring a conversation to a satisfying conclusion. But when Sam’s eyes finally open, he finally has the words.

“Hey,” Sam rasps.

He forgets preamble.

“Hey. Old Ike’s word. Whatever it was, that’s what you are to me.”

Sam blinks.

“What?”

Dammit.

Dean’s stumbling now. “You know. The untranslatable word. The most important word in the world. Like... home.”

He knows he isn’t saying it as eloquently as Sam could, but in his mind, he’s saying everything.

“This is painful,” Sam says from his bed.

Oh shit. Dean hadn’t even asked. “Your leg?”

Sam gestures weakly in Dean’s general direction. “No, this.”

But he’s grinning.

“So, uh…” Dean presses on, manfully. “You picking up what I’m putting down?”

“This means we’re finally talking about things instead of pretending they didn’t happen for…” he pauses, “six years?”

“Yeah.”

“Then yeah.”

This time, when Sam turns his hand over, palm up, Dean covers it with his own. They sit there like that until they both fall asleep, and then a little while after that, too.

()()()()()

_Six weeks later…_

“There, Sammy. Uh huh. Thaaaaaaat’s it. Yep, like that, like that. Wait! Slower or I’m gonna…”

Sam extracts himself, wipes his mouth with the back of his hand.

“I’m starting to regret encouraging you to communicate.”

**Author's Note:**

> Comments and kudos are love!
> 
> Oh look, here's a [rebloggable Tumblr link](https://crooked-sleep.tumblr.com/post/189313516164/the-last-word) if you are so inclined.


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